Meet our scientists

A real meeting place for the major players in virtual and augmented reality: start-ups, investors, large groups, users and suppliers. For 3 days, the whole community will be gathered to discover the latest innovations in immersive technologies.

Inria will present « The Virtual Us /alter-egos virtuels »

On the Destination Rennes stand, Inria will present "The Virtueal Us/alter-egos" demonstration to immerse us in the midst of virtual humans going about their usual business and then study our behaviour in these scenes... this demonstration is the vocation of VirtUS, the future joint research team of the Inria Rennes Bretagne Atlantique centre and the IRISA.

"If you are immersed in a virtual street, you expect to see people walking, shopping or talking. If you are immersed in a train station, then you would expect to see travellers about to catch a train, friends accompanying them, but also people just buying cigarettes at the tobacco shop in the concourse. Our team is interested in how we populate these specific environments with virtual alter egos that behave as they would in real life," summarises researcher Julien Pettré (Inria researcher in the Rainbow team).

 

And to better understand human behaviour in a street or a railway station, the researchers will immerse us in a simulation of these places. Two objectives are therefore superimposed. The first is technological. It aims to find the art and the way to create these autonomous virtual humans to make them walk in a simulator in the presence of a person equipped with a visiocasque. The second concerns the scientific exploitation of what this immersive simulation allows us to observe.

For more information on the work of "Créer des simulations immersives peuplées" … (in french only)

INSA Rennes will present the European project "Interreg - Adapt

The Interreg ADAPT project aims to use assistive technologies, social assistance robotics and the intelligent electric wheelchair to meet the mobility and autonomy needs of people in the context of an ageing population and an increase in the number of patients with chronic disabilities.

As part of the European ADAPT project, Marie Babel (INSA teacher-researcher in the Rainbow research team) is working on the development of an electric wheelchair driving aid. Marie and the partners in this Franco-English project have designed an electric wheelchair capable of avoiding obstacles. Equipped with sensors, the wheelchair creates a sort of protective zone around itself, allowing it to correct or adapt its trajectory. And to take it a step further, the team has designed a simulator of this wheelchair to help people learn how to use this driving assistance. Placed on a system of robotic jacks that reproduce the movement and with the help of a virtual helmet, the driver will learn to drive this intelligent chair.

This virtual environment has been completely modelled to reproduce a room but also districts of Rennes, thanks to data provided by the City of Rennes. By putting all the senses into action (sight, body movements, hearing, etc.), the aim is to immerse the learner as much as possible in order to promote learning and protection.

read the article "A technological innovation that will revolutionize wheelchair mobility"
read the article "Launch of the Innovations, Handicap, Autonomy and Accessibility Chair (IH2A), headed by Marie Babel"

State-of-the-art equipment: IMMERSIA

And when it comes to virtual reality, we should not forget to mention the state-of-the-art IMMERSIA facility. The first virtual reality platform in France, created in 1999 and installed at the University of Rennes 1, this exceptionally large platform (10m x 3m x 3m) is managed by the INRIA research centre and the IRISA laboratory. It hosts numerous national and international research projects and supports companies in various fields: health, culture, sport, architecture, etc.
See the video produced by Destination Rennes